Iraq

(Beirut) – The extremist armed group Islamic State should urgently release Yezidi women and girls they abducted in 2014, Human Rights Watch said today, following new research with recent escapees who were raped and traded between members before they fled. Islamic State (also known as ISIS) also routinely imposes abusive restrictions on other Iraqi women and girls and severely limits their freedom of movement and access to health care and education in areas under its control, Human Rights Watch said today.

Collected from dozens of interviews and reports from Iraqi feminists, labor organizers, environmentalists, and protest movement leaders, Against All Odds presents unique voices of progressive Iraqi organizing on the ground. Dating back to 2003, with emphasis on the 2011 upsurge in mobilization and hope as well as the subsequent embattled years, these voices belong to Iraqis asserting themselves as agents against multiple local, regional, and global forces of oppression.

Women took to the streets of al-Mutanabbi Street in central Baghdad June 2, holding large banners denouncing fasliya marriage — the Arabic word for marriages arranged as compensation, through which tribal conflicts are resolved — which has surfaced in Iraq anew. The return of this type of marriage comes as a result of a frail state and the predominance of tribal values over social life, as well as the exacerbation of conflicts between Iraqi tribes in central and southern areas.

Last August, the world watched in horror as the extremist armed group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, attacked Iraq’s Yezidi community. Thousands fled without food or water into the nearby Sinjar mountains, but ISIS fighters waylaid many, executing men and abducting thousands of people, mainly women and children. Rumors of forced marriage and enslavement of Yezidi girls and women swirled, and were later confirmed as a trickle of women and girls – now numbering into the hundreds – escaped. Human Rights Watch researchers Samer Muscati andRothna Begum interviewed 20 of these women and girls and shared their findings with Amy Braunschweiger.

Sexualised and gender-based violence in Iraq, highlighted in recent weeks in relation to ISIS atrocities, has been at the heart of sectarian and authoritarian politics and developments since 2003. How can we talk about it and mobilise against it?

As the UN Security Council tackles the entity claiming to be “Islamic State,” and President Barack Obama invokes global Muslim responsibility, many ask whether people of Muslim heritage do enough to counter extremism.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Levantine (ISIS) atrocities, since the occupation of Mosul city, have shocked the Iraqi and the International community altogether. Their criminal conduct is abysmal against Iraqi women in general, and specifically against the Yazidi, Christian, Shiite Shebek and Turkomen women.

Warvin Foundation for Women's Issues have announced the formation of a group to address kidnappings and abuse of women by ISIS in the Kurdish region of Iraq. The "5+ Group for Women's Aid" was officially announced via a press-conference at the Chwarchara-hotel in Erbil on September 4 2014.

The extremist Sunni militant group called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which recently declared a caliphate in parts of the Middle East, now controls an area of 13,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria. Testimonies coming out about daily life in the ISIS-controlled region depict an agenda of fear and intimidation being imposed, one that targets women with repression and violence.